An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine

I love it. I used to work for a company targeting markets in the developing world. It's really easy to take for granted the supply chains that exist all around us. I always like to see the creative solutions people come up with when resources are constrained.

PS: As an example, note the sheet-metal construction. In an industrialized country we would laser-cut all these parts. If you wanted to make this in an area with less infrastructure you might use a template and carbide gas torch to cut out the large shapes, then a hand punch to make the screw holes. More labor intensive, but still doable.

Feel like replacing my piece of shit LG with this. It can only soak for a predetermined amount of time and if I try to pause it to soak longer it drains the water in 3 minutes. Plus, scrud!

Had the feeling someone must have made a similar design in Japan. And yes:

https://youtu.be/iMOkxrdP6kY?si=HWf_Sb-zwk5Vi8ES

(sold for about 10,000 yens https://item.rakuten.co.jp/thanko/000000003846/)

The metal design in the article is still more flexible and durable. I also assumed the Japanese version would be targeted at disaster situations and/or remote mountain areas and be more repairable, but the cost saving part seems to be a major selling point.

>It works like this: after loading the clothes, detergent and water, and letting it sit for 10-15 minutes, users can close the lid and turn the handle for two minutes, repeating this twice more after ten minutes of letting the clothes sit in between spins. And voila — the machine can then be drained using the tap at the front.

I lived off-grid and did all of our laundry, a family of four (including a baby in cloth diapers), by hand, even in the winter (below -20F).

You know what works as well? A wash tub and a stick. Or a bucket and plunger. Or a posser if you're really fancy. I used a 30 gallon garbage can and a hand-carved posser. In mild or hot climates you can just stomp on it.

Same principle: Draw water, add cleanser, agitate for a couple of minutes, let it soak, return at some time in the future, agitate again. Remove laundry and let drip dry while you draw fresh water (mangles and spinners speed this up and are more effective, but not necessary). Squeeze wet laundry at lowest point where water has gathered. Repeat entire process with clean water, then lay it out in the sun prioritizing any sides with stains.

The secret sauce of clean laundry isn't how you agitate the laundry. It's just time and chemistry.

Water access, cleansing agents, and patience are fundamentally more important than providing "revolutionary" contraptions. It's the same difference between teaching people about no-knead bread and giving them hand-cranked stand-mixers. One solves the need for intensive manual labor and the other doesn't, but introduces a new point of failure.

And even importing enzyme-containing detergent is unnecessary. Plant ash (a source of alkali) and aged urine (a source of ammonia) are all you need to create what's known as bucking lye which cleans just as effectively and uses byproducts that they themselves produce by default. Residual stains are removed via UV from sun drying.

There's absolutely no need to complicate this.

> We went back to the drawing board and really listened to the people we were designing for, for the context in which they lived. That research changed everything,”

I understand they had a very good idea to begin with, and more importantly their heart in the right place And then further made it better with more input.

Reading the comments here the better solution for us is probably not to go back to "dumb" washing machines, but to regain control of how these machines are designed, for who and for what.

I'm thinking about Linux, which can be stripped down as small and nimble as needed to run a single board micro controller, or be large as needed to have everything to run an enterprise service. Being able to do the same with a washing machine would absolutely change their usefulness and place in our society.

I don't know how it could start, perhaps with an IKEA washing machine that actually needs assembly, for users to then tweak the parts, start comminities so we get at least in a KALLAX situation ?

https://ikeahackers.net/2025/07/ikea-kallax-hacks-2.html

Love seeing this.

For many reasons, I expect to see a lot of new products and solutions going against the main trends of locking down the user, planned obsolence, rent seeking from buyers, and limiting their choices.

Imagining a company shipping the home appliances equivalent to Frame.work laptops: open, reparable, hackable, and upgradable. I would happily connect them to my home wifi, program them the way I want, and have one hub that allows me to monitor health, upgrade firmware, control functionality.

Sadly arm strength and endurance is way worse than legs, this should obviously work with pedals like a bicycle. I would even be ready to buy one to replace my daily commute when working from home.

I really like the practicality and simplicity of this.

Designing stuff for real humans to use, is really difficult, and really humbling.

In my experience, defense contractors really have to take the user context into account. It can be life or death. I used to work for one, and seeing the stuff come back from the field, was a lesson in humility.

It is easy to understand the impact this will be in people’s lives.

I think within no time it will be modded with motors, maybe salvaged from broken electrical appliances and it will come full circle.

There are lots of little hand-crank washing machines on Alibaba and Amazon. Most are plastic and rather fragile looking. Many seem to use the mechanism of salad spinners. The Sears WonderWash seems to be popular.

Wait does it not need a rise as well to get the soap out of the clothes?

This is very cool. Great that it’s built out of metal for longevity and repairability. Wonder if they could make the radius of the rotation smaller since that seems like the most likely ergonomic improvement I could see from the demo.

Previously (2021): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168460

Checks all the boxes but why no TEDx talk?

Deleted cause I was wrong.

But can it really clean clothes if it doesn’t have 802.11ac with AI spot cleaning and a 750mv iOS app??? /s

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